Taskin Padir

Taskin Padir (born August 31, 1971) is a Turkish-American robotics researcher and Professor in the Department Of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, who works in the fields of human-robot teaming, supervised autonomy for humanoid robots, shared autonomy for intelligent vehicles, and embodied artificial intelligence. He is the Director of the Robotics and Intelligent Vehicles Research Laboratory (RIVeR Lab) at Northeastern University and was the founding director of the Institute for Experiential Robotics. Since 2022, he has concurrently held the position of Amazon Scholar.

Biography

Padir received his Bachelor of Science in electrical and electronics engineering from the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, Turkey in 1993. He pursued graduate studies in the United States at Purdue University, earning a Master of Science in electrical and computer engineering in 1997, followed by a Ph.D. in the same field in 2004.

After completing his doctorate, Padir began his academic career as an assistant professor at Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan from 2004 to 2008. In 2008, Padir joined Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Robotics Engineering program. During his tenure at WPI, he established the RIVeR Lab in 2010 and became recognized for his innovative teaching methods and research leadership. At WPI, Padir received the Romeo L. Moruzzi Young Faculty Award for Innovation in Undergraduate Education in 2011, the Inaugural Rho Beta Epsilon Award for Excellence in Robotics Education in 2010, and the Kalenian Award for Entrepreneurial Spirit in 2014 for his work on electromyography interfaces for assistive robotic platforms.

Padir joined Northeastern University around 2017, where he holds the rank of professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department with a courtesy appointment in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences. He founded the Institute for Experiential Robotics at Northeastern and continued directing the RIVeR Lab, which relocated with him from WPI. In June 2022, Padir was selected as Northeastern University's first Amazon Scholar, a program that partners university professors with Amazon to work on large-scale robotics projects. In this role, he collaborates with Amazon Robotics on projects aimed at improving delivery operations and warehouse automation.

Work

Padir's work in robotics led to contributions in human-robot teaming, supervised autonomy for humanoid robots, and shared autonomy for intelligent vehicles. His research focuses on developing collaborative robots that can operate safely and effectively alongside humans in various settings, including manufacturing, healthcare, disaster response, and nuclear decommissioning. His main research areas include supervised autonomy for humanoid robots, shared autonomy for intelligent vehicles, human-in-the-loop control systems, collaborative robotics and embodied artificial intelligence, robot manipulation and perception, and human-robot teaming in extreme environments.

Padir led the WPI-CMU team in the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC), where the team placed 7th in the 2015 DRC Finals with an upgraded Atlas robot known as "WARNER" (WPI's Atlas Robot for Nonconventional Emergency Response). The DRC aimed to develop robots capable of disaster response operations. In November 2015, NASA awarded Padir's team one of two NASA R5 "Valkyrie" humanoid robots as part of the Space Robotics Challenge.

Padir has led project teams for the NASA Sample Return Robot Centennial Challenge, a competition focused on developing autonomous robots capable of collecting and returning samples from challenging terrain.

In 2014–2015, Padir worked on repurposing robotics technology to assist healthcare workers during the Ebola outbreak. He focused on developing robots for decontamination tasks and telepresence applications to minimize direct contact with infected patients. His work received media attention, with interviews in The New York Times and BBC News discussing the potential role of robotics in combating the epidemic.

Padir has been cited over 3,200 times according to Google Scholar. He holds multiple patents, including "Systems and methods for robotic grippers with fiber optic spectroscopy" (co-inventors: Kris Dorsey and Deniz Erdogmus).

Awards and honors

Padir became a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Robotics and Automation, Control Systems, Systems, Man and Cybernetics, and Engineering in Medicine and Biology societies, a member of the American Society for Engineering Education, and a member of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. He was awarded the 2024 Faculty Research Team Award, the 2023 Impact Award, the 2022 Faculty Research Team Award, and the 2020 Faculty Research Team Award. In 2014, he received the Kalenian Award for Entrepreneurial Spirit from Worcester Polytechnic Institute for his project on an electromyography input interface designed to enable intuitive operation of assistive robotic platforms. He was honored with the 2011 Romeo L. Moruzzi Young Faculty Award for Innovation in Undergraduate Education and the 2010 Rho Beta Epsilon Award for Excellence in Robotics Education.

Publications

  • Padir, T., Ciaraldi, M., Cobb, E., Looft, F., & Norton, R. (2009). "Designing an Undergraduate Robotics Engineering Curriculum: Unified Robotics I and II." Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference.
  • Luo, R., Zolotas, M., Moore, D., & Padir, T. (2024). "User-customizable Shared Control for Robot Teleoperation via Virtual Reality." IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 12196-12203.
  • Li, H., Akl, J., Sridhar, S., Brady, T., & Padir, T. (2025). "ViTa-Zero: Zero-shot Visuotactile Object 6D Pose Estimation."
  • Suresh, S., Carvajal, M. A., Hanson, N., Holand, E., Hibbard, S., & Padir, T. (2024). "Use-Inspired Mobile Robot to Improve Safety of Building Retrofit Workforce in Constrained Spaces."